It Doesn't Matter
by Shade Strife
Summary: A short following Tifa's thoughts after discovering Cloud by the train station in the slums. I do not own any of the characters; that honor goes to Square.


Under the plate that supported upper Midgar there was no real night or day. Instead a perpetual gloom resided in its place; the plate above blocked the sun during the day, and the lights from the city above maintained the dim glow during the night. The only way the residents of the slums could tell the difference between the two was by their clocks, and more often than not they were wrong anyway. The only place that seemed to know exactly what time of day, month, and season it was was the train to the upper plate.  
  
Tifa stood at the counter of the 7th Heaven, absently wiping clean shot glasses as she stared out one of the dingy windows. No matter how often she cleaned them, the glass panes always seemed to draw dirt to them like a magnet the moment her back was turned. She sighed. That was the way with most things in the slums; the smog that clouded the air dirtied everything that it touched, slowly poisoning a town that was already dieing.  
  
The only was to fix the problem was to destroy ShinRa. /The same way they destroyed everything that was ever important to me. The same way they destroyed Nibelheim./  
  
Marlene running into the bar, eyes wide cut Tifa's musings short. Turning to Tifa she held her finger to her lips and made a "Shhhh" noise.  
  
Tifa smiled. She had always liked the small girl. "What's going on?" she whispered.  
  
"Daddy says, " be quiet, an' stay inside"." Marlene crawled onto a stool and wiped off a small circle of the window so that she could see out. "He say he want to see how good your friend is with "dat big butter knife 'o his"."  
  
Tifa dropped the shot glass she was drying and rushed to the window. Wiping off more of the window, she stared intently through it. "Why didn't you say he was going to fight Cloud?" Not waiting for an answer she turned back to the window.  
  
Outside in the almost subterranean gloom, Berret stood in the center of the space between the opposing houses. Cocking his gun-arm he held it up, ready to fire, and began to slowly search the shadows for the mercenary.  
  
/Cloud is playing hide and go seek with him. He won't like that much. / Tifa found herself smiling in spite of herself. /And I'll bet that's why Cloud is doing this. /  
  
Berret stood up. He'd had enough of this game. "Shi- That's it! C'mon! Show ya self! I don' got all day ter bash yo spiky ass in, so hurry up!"  
  
An instant later Berret wished he hadn't opened his mouth. There was a bright flash of light, and then his whole body was wracked with a pain so intense that it almost drove him to his knees. Almost.  
  
Behind him Cloud stood at the edge of the shadows, stroking the orb of lightning materia he had just used. He had expected more results from his favorite magic, but wasn't unduly bothered. He readjusted his grip on the buster sword and waited for Berret to realize where he was. /For someone that's supposed to lead a rebel group, this guy sure is slow/  
  
Cloud raised the broad blade of his sword in front of himself for protection as bullets rained about him. Dirt filled the air, obscuring his vision and settling in his throat. Smiling thinly, Cloud braced himself further against his weapon. Berret would be using the dust as cover as he closed in to attack properly. It was a good strategy; one Cloud might have used himself if he had been in the other man's position, but for it's one flaw. While it kept Cloud from seeing the larger man, it also prevented Berret from seeing him.  
  
From her viewpoint in the window, Tifa watched as Berret slowly advanced into the haze, not stopping the constant rounds of bullets. Marlene clapped her hands. "Daddy's winning!"  
  
Tifa didn't say anything. Something was going on. Even when he was young, Cloud had never waited this long to attack. He had always preferred to go head to head, pitting his own natural speed and strength against that of his opponent's. Guarding like this wasn't like him at all. Unless…  
  
Beside her, Marlene jumped and almost fell off the windowsill. Cloud had appeared without warning; leaping high above the dust, sword raised over his head in his signature Braver attack. Berret didn't notice until Cloud's feet slammed into his shoulders, driving him forcefully onto the ground. Before the larger man could move the blade of the Buster Sword bit into the ground beside his head and Cloud's knee was pressed against his throat, signaling the end of the match.  
  
Tifa let out her breath, surprised to discover that she had been holding it all this time. Hands shaking, she returned to the counter and continued to dry shot glasses. Marlene ran outside to see if her father was all right. Tifa didn't move from the bar; she knew Cloud would be in shortly. As she placed another shot glass onto the counter, Tifa realized her hands were still shaking. /But why? Was I really that nervous that he'd lose? That he'd leave and I'd never see him again? / Tifa shook her head. None of this made sense. She'd never had feelings for Cloud when she was a young girl, so why was she suddenly fretting over the fact that he might leave?  
  
The saloon style doors of the 7th Heaven banged open and Cloud limped through. Stumping over to the nearest chair he sat and began to examine his leg. Feeling Tifa's eyes on him he looked up. "Hey Tiff, you wouldn't happen to have a potion kicking around here anywhere's?"  
  
Tifa shook her head. "Berret is saving them for the attacks on the reactor. Sorry, looks like you're out of luck."  
  
"Do you have anything? I'm not gonna be much use if I don't get this leg patched up." Cloud watched as his friend ducked behind the counter, looking for bandages.  
  
"I can pick up a potion later, but this will have to do for now." Tifa found an old first aid kit and lobbed it across the room at Cloud. "Do you want some help with that?"  
  
"I think I can manage."  
  
Nodding, Tifa watched Cloud a moment longer before turning her attention back to the bar. The pair continued their own business, the silence broken only by the chink of glass on wood and the occasional curse word on Cloud's part.  
  
Finishing with the glasses, Tifa pulled out a wet rag and started to clean off the counter. /He's changed so much, and it's not just those eyes. / She hadn't quite gotten over the shock of seeing Cloud's eyes for the first time. She had remembered them being soft and rather gentle, only changing when he was angry or fighting. That had happened a lot before he had left. She couldn't remember why he had always been in fights, but before he had left to join SOLDIER that was all he seemed to be able to do. But even after he had been fighting his eyes had never stayed angry for long.  
  
Seven years absence and work for ShinRa had changed all that. Tifa could now see why people said, "Only one about to die could look a SOLDIER in the eye". She had thought that the saying was just a tribute to their fighting prowess. But looking at Cloud, she could see that the saying was much more literal. They were terrifying. Cold and clear, the faint blue glow focused into a gaze so penetrating that Tifa couldn't meet his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. When he was angry the glow seemed to intensify into a blaze of cold blue flame, creating the image that one was no longer looking at a human, but a demon capable of immense destruction.  
  
/ShinRa's shock troops. Set loose on anything they deem too great a risk for the mighty ShinRa army. Trained destroyers./ Tifa fiddled with the rag. /And my best friend is, or rather was, one of them/  
  
"Hey Tifa? You still alive in there?" Cloud had finished with his leg and was now looking at her with amusement. "You looked a little tired just now."  
  
Tifa threw him a mock-angry glare. "Impudent young snit," she said severely, managing a fair imitation of a strict mother, "Do not insult your elders. I'll go to bed when I'm ready and not a minute before!"  
  
Cloud laughed and grabbed a stool at the bar. "Funny, I thought I was the older one here?"  
  
Tifa stuck out her tongue. "Then act like it."  
  
"You know, you were a lot less insulting the last time I saw you."  
  
"A lot changes in seven years, Cloud."  
  
"You mean five," he corrected, looking at her oddly. "Are you sure you're okay? Your memory seems to be slipping. You made the same mistake yesterday."  
  
"Sorry. For some reason I seem to have the number 'seven' stuck in my head lately." Tifa covered her mistake by turning to the drinks. " You thirsty?"  
  
"I thought you'd never ask. Where'd you learn the whole bartender thing anyways? I didn't think your Dad encouraged that sort of stuff."  
  
Tifa felt a pang of regret at the mention of her father. "He didn't," she replied, keeping her eyes low. "After Nibelheim I ended up here, and this was one of the most popular professions. Sector seven didn't have a decent bar at the time, so I opened this place. Mixing drinks isn't too hard. Once the customer's drunk, he doesn't care what you serve him as long as it's semi-liquid and more than a month old. Here."  
  
Cloud took his drink and sipped it. He mulled over the flavor for a moment before taking another drink. "Good shit, " he commented.  
  
"Now what would your mother say if she heard you say that?"  
  
Cloud closed his eyes and bowed his head over his cup. "I'd give anything to hear what she'd say. But because of Sephiroth…" through the heavy shock of hair covering his eyes Tifa saw his eyes flare momentarily at the name Sephiroth. "Because of HIM she's …"  
  
Tifa came around the bar to sit on the stool next to him. "We all lost people at Nibelheim," she whispered softly.  
  
Cloud looked straight at her, fixing her with a piercing stare. They blazed with anger, but it was not directed at her. "Sephiroth at least had the decency, if you'll forgive my use of the word, to kill your father cleanly with a sword. He died trying to defend you and the rest of the town." Tifa squirmed involuntarily under Cloud's glare. He seemed to realize what he was doing and looked away. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Like I said, your father died honorably. My mother burned alive. She was too sick at that point to do anything to help herself. By the time I found her she was nothing more than a charred corpse on the floor of a burning house."  
  
Even as Tifa recognized the truth of the story, a nasty little voice in the back of her mind wouldn't stop reminding her of one fact. / That's what happened, yes. But how could he know? He wasn't in Nibelheim five years ago. It was someone else./  
  
For mot of the rest of the night Tifa listened to Cloud's stories. He'd been everywhere by the sounds of it. Wutai, Costa de Sol, and places he still wasn't allowed to name. But when she asked questions, he'd only answer some. It was almost as though he was repeating a story someone else had told him.  
  
When she woke up the next day, Berret and the others had left for the attack on the reactor. Not long after ten, the first customers of the day started to seep in. Normally this was her favorite time of day, when everybody was at least half sober and she didn't have to deal with people hitting on her constantly, or threaten to knock out the participants of a brawl.  
  
Today though, all she could think about was the night before. It didn't make any sense. Cloud knew everything that he shouldn't, but nothing that he should. When she had asked him about something as simple as entering SOLDIER, she got a vague answer about not remembering too much. Yet he could give a full account of the events at Nibelheim, something that ShinRa had kept secret from their own workers as well as the public. The only way he could have known would to have been there. And Tifa was positive that he hadn't. Instead there had been a tall man with long black hair the stuck out at odd angles without rhyme or reason. There were similarities between the two; the buster sword, the uniform, but they could never have been the same person. Other things that didn't make sense, things that he should do, things that should have happened, all built up in her head until she felt as though she would either scream or pass out.  
  
And then there was the dream. Tifa handed another drink out, not really caring who took it. Last night she had dreamt that she had been with Cloud, standing at his side. But he hadn't been there. His body had been there, but /he/ had not. Cloud was far away, somewhere she couldn't reach, and she was left standing beside a soulless shell. She'd say something to him, but it wasn't him who would answer. She knew the voice. It was the same voice that had plagued her nightmares ever since she had watched him burn her home.  
  
Sephiroth.  
  
The rest of the day passed as a blur, but at the same time, agonizingly slow. At some point Tifa made a resolution in the back of her mind to confront Cloud and find out what happened. No stories, just a straight answer.  
  
It was a relief when Berret came bursting in at eleven and kicked out whatever customers were too drunk to get out on their own. Then came the rest of the group, making a beeline for the nearest table. Then last of all came Cloud, wandering in sometime after everyone else had arrived. Seeing Tifa, he started to come over.  
  
Tifa felt all the confusion she had felt through the last few days come to a head. Now he was standing in front of her, saying something to Marlene.  
  
/Confront him. / The thought echoed through her head.  
  
"Cloud…" she started, but couldn't get the next word out. /Why? Why can't I ask? Am I afraid to know the truth? / She took another breath and almost started again, but froze.  
  
Cloud didn't say a word. He didn't have to say a word. He just handed her the flower.  
  
Tifa felt her mind go blank. Wordlessly she took the flower, examining its flawless white petals. Then she sat the flower on the counter and hugged Cloud fiercely. If he was startled by the sudden show of affection, he didn't show it.  
  
As Cloud returned the hug, all the confusion drained away, leaving one conclusion.  
  
/I don't care what happened. All that matters is that he's here now. And as long as he's here, I'll be with him. / 


End file.
